My first forays into the world of photography, was with a compact 35mm camera borrowed from my parents and a lot of the earlier truck photos were taken with this.

Something better was required when I started talking railway photos, so I purchased my first SLR - a Cosina C1, with a manual focus short zoom lens. This let me learn much more about photography and how to take decent photos of moving subjects. At the time, all my images were taken using colour print from various manufacturers.

The next upgrade was to a Minolta 404si (a system I would stick with), which came with a 28-80 lens. A Minolta 75-300 lens soon joined the kit bag, followed later by a standard 50mm lens - a cracking lens that I still use to this day. To start with, I continued to take my images using colour print but soon made the transition to Fuli slide film, with Sensia 400ASA being the favourite.

The 404 done me well until I succumbed to the digital revolution (in hindsight a great move) and I purchased my first digital SLR - the Minolta 5D along with the kit lens. This opening up many more possibilities when taking shots up this end of the country, with it’s extremes of weather and no more waiting on a film finishing to get the shots back.

Unfortunately, a fault with the anti-shake mechanism after around 2 years meant that this camera had to be replaced (under extended warranty). With the only DSLR with the Minolta mount at the time being the Sony a100 DSLR, I had no option but to go with this model. This turned out to be a very good piece of kit and one that I still use to this day as a back-up body.

When finances allowed, I managed to upgrade my lens collection and now use the Sigma 17-70, the old faithful Minolta 50mm and the most recent addition, the superb Sigma 70-200 f2.8. Although the later is a hefty bit of kit (both in weight and cost) it’s a lens that’s proved it’s worth time and time again.

In early March 2012, I finally managed to get my hands on the new Sony a77 body (the replacement in the range for the a700). This is a worthy upgrade from my much used a100 and initial results look very promising.